Craft Cocktail Journey
I first fell in love with craft cocktails after a friend introduced me to a great speakeasy in Denver, Colorado. I walked into The Green Russell in downtown Denver and immediately fell in love with the place. It is dark and cozy with richly upholstered furniture, warm hardwoods, and brick accents. It is also underground!
You walk downstairs into Wednesday’s Pie Shop and tell the hostess you want to have a drink. They will lead you through a metal service door into the bar area. There are two large bars in the place and ten or twelve smaller seating areas for more intimate gatherings. I suggest sitting at the bar though.
The bartenders dress in prohibition-era clothing, and you get to watch them work when you sit at the bar. Like a lot of craft bars, you can order your favorite cocktail from an extensive menu. Additionally, you can simply tell the bartender your favorite flavors and let them design something custom for you.
The bar uses only the best alcohols, fresh juices, along with house-made syrups and bitters. They even have a small greenhouse behind one of the bars where they grow all the botanicals they use at the bars. They produce their large clear ice slabs in-house and hand carve every cube for your glass.
Discovering the Best Cocktail
On my first visit to The Green Russell, I knew I liked whiskey and was not a big fan of sweet drinks. The bartender proceeded to make a cocktail that quickly became my favorite, the whiskey sour. I watched him work, and almost freaked out when I saw him crack an egg for my drink! I had never heard of eggs in cocktails.
He placed in front of me a frothy, yellow cocktail with drops of dark bitters on the foam. Taking my first sip, I fell in love with the taste. It was tart and sweet with a great texture from the egg white foam. The bitters added a complex aroma to the nose that accentuated the smoky flavor of the whiskey. I was hooked, and I had to learn how to make this cocktail.
My Perfect Whiskey Sour
Like most classic cocktails, the whiskey sour is not a complex drink. It is only five ingredients: whiskey (or bourbon), lemon juice, sugar syrup, bitters, and egg white.
The key, in my opinion, is to use the best possible ingredients. Fresh juices and simple syrup are very easy to make yourself, and they will make a huge difference in the taste of your drinks. Also, using fresh ingredients as the base of your drinks will let you experiment with different types of alcohol to alter the tastes.
Friends and family tell me that my whiskey sour is their favorite. Many of them ask me to make it any time they are over to our house. I try to tell them it is simple, but they just wait for me to make it for them.
If you like my recipe, great. You may find it too sweet or too tart or too spirit-forward. That’s fine. We all have different tastes. Take what I have here and change it to what fits your palette. I would encourage everyone to always find what they like and make it your way. If you like what is in the glass, then you did it right!
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Recipe
Hardware
- Cocktail shaker (I use a three-piece cobbler shaker for this drink because I find it foams the egg white better.)
- Jigger or measuring cup
- Hawthorne strainer, or use the strainer on your cobbler shaker
- Rocks glass or coupe or red Solo cup (whatever holds liquid)
- Citrus juicer
Software
- 2 oz quality whiskey, rye, or bourbon (Do not use extremely high proof alcohol here as it will affect how the egg white froths. I use an 80-100 proof for this cocktail.)
- 1 oz lemon juice
- 1.5 oz simple syrup
- 1 egg white
- Ice cubes
- Angostura bitters
Add the egg white, lemon juice, simple syrup, and whiskey into your shaker. Shake the liquids vigorously for at least thirty seconds. This is known as a “dry shake”, which means there is no ice in the shaker. Dry shaking with egg white will allow the acid in the lemon juice to emulsify the egg white into a frothy, bubbly foam that is key to this drink. After your arms are tired of shaking, add about eight ounces of ice to the shaker and shake aggressively again.
Strain the drink into an empty rocks glass or coupe and wait about a minute.
Waiting allows the foam to rise to the top of the drink.
You will get a golden, yellow liquid topped by a white froth. If not, then you probably did not dry shake enough.
Once the foam rises to the top, drip five or six drops of the bitters on top. Remember, you taste with your nose as well as your tongue. So, when you drink this cocktail inhale the scent of the bitters to get the full effect.
Consume and enjoy. Warning: you will want more than one of these.
I would love to hear if you make this drink and what you think. If you have your own recipe for this classic cocktail, please share as well.
Also, let us know how you first discovered your love of great cocktails!
Unclear about some of the terminology in this post? Check out my bartender jargon post.
Enjoy!
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